Daily Archives: October 15, 2012

You may remember that unfortunate tweet young Master Bray popped out after his team lost another game to a ranked opponent. At least Bray had enough sense to pull it and apologize. His coach thinks he may have overreacted – all that was called for was a little judicious editing.

Dooley on Bray's tweet: "It could have been a good tweet if he had left out the first part. It had a little humor to it."

“We did a couple things differently in the [South Carolina] game because of the edge pass rushers. Really they have three good pass rushers there at South Carolina. You want to help your tackles out, so we did things a little differently there in pass protection, too, whether it was having a back helping or a tight end helping. We may have spent too much time and scheme on that, where we should have just done what we have been doing all year long and realize they may win one once or twice, but we were also going to win our share too. And just running the ball between the tackles — we probably should have stayed with that a little more than we did. But they made the plays early in the game and got the lead, and we probably just didn’t stick with that inside run game as much as we should.” [Emphasis added.]

You come into the game ranked highly in every team offensive statistic that matters. For the first time in the program’s history, a Georgia team scored more than 40 points in five straight games. Clearly, something is working on offense, and at a high level, too. Yet, because you freak out over whether your green offensive line can handle blocking South Carolina’s excellent defensive ends, you decide to rip up what’s been working and try something else.

If you don’t trust the coaches and players who’ve been making the calls and the plays all along, why should they trust themselves?

Admittedly, no SEC athletic director in his right mind is ready to come out publicly and say he’d consider hiring Petrino, because nobody wants to have to answer to this kind of thinking – yet:

My answer was that hopefully neither school will hire him. Hopefully no one anywhere will hire the former Arkansas football coach who somehow forgot he was a married father long enough to have an affair with an athletic department employee, promoted her to a job she may or may not have been qualified to have, then lied about all of it to his athletic director.

Any university that would hire Petrino should disallow any pretense that ethics, character and decency are a part of its mission statement.

Just come right out and say, “Our motto is ‘The End Justifies the Means.’ We’re changing our athletic nickname to Pigs, Snakes or Cockroaches — at least until the ACLU or Humane Society charge that’s an affront to pigs, snakes and cockroaches — and we’re trying to hire John Edwards or Arnold Schwarzenegger as our school president.”

But I’d be willing to bet a substantial amount of money that Petrino’s name has been breached behind closed doors. And more than once. Which doors? Well, speaking of betting money, check out these three lines that greeted me this morning:

Alabama at Tennessee +20.5

Georgia at Kentucky +28.5

Auburn at Vanderbilt -7.5 (!)

When’s the last time Auburn was an underdog to Vandy?

To add insult to injury, I doubt I’d pick any of the ‘dogs to cover. Those are lost seasons and you’ve got to figure there’s enough restlessness in the respective fan bases to encourage at least one AD to hold his nose and proclaim that he’s convinced Bobby Petrino is a changed man. Of course, there are two ways you can go from there – you can hold stealth negotiations and announce the hire as a fait accompli, or you can let word get out that you’re seriously considering the possibility of hiring the man. I’m hoping for the latter, if only to smoke out all the desperate actors.

The only thing more embarrassing than hiring Petrino would be to get in a bidding war for his services and lose out to another conference school.

As for the buyout money that Wiedmer frets over, I wouldn’t be too concerned. Never underestimate the size of frustrated alums’/supporters’ checkbooks. And this is what SEC TV money’s for, anyway.

Just when you thought you might be getting a handle on the natural order of things in this year’s model of the SEC, they go and throw you a few change ups: LSU beats South Carolina at its own game, TAMU needs fifty-nine points to get past a WAC team in a game that wasn’t settled until the last minute and Auburn generously lets Ole Miss end a 16-game conference losing streak.

Quote Of The Day

“I’m thrilled for this day to get here, and I’m excited to find out how a lot of these new guys learn. These practices are not easy, and the idea is to create adversity for your team and find out who your leaders are.” — Kirby Smart, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 8/1/17